The city over the river ………….

Now yesterday I posted a story of Greenwich Park and the view from the hill across the River.

And it prompted Douglas White to post one of his which he gave me permission to use.  It is as he says, “One of many views from Severndroog Castle on Shooter's Hill. 

Not quite a 360 degree due to trees behind taller than the tower, but a zoom lens will bring the city, Docklands, the west end into view, and far to the west (out of picture) Windsor Castle looms as a shadow on the horizon”.

I still remember looking out from both locations at the city over the river.

Back in the 1960s, I had no camera to record the scene, and now I live in the far north and do not regularly get home.

But there will be someone who does have those pictures of the very different skyline and may choose to share them. 

I can still remember the first time I saw the view from Shooters Hill at night.  

I was visiting Mr. Vaughan who was my science teacher at Samuel Pepys, who I hoped would help me with a few textbooks to assist my retake of O level Science.

By then I had left the school in New Cross for the much grander Crown Woods and the promise of A levels, but my failure at getting Maths or Science GCE, doomed me to a resit.

Until the visit to Mr. Vaughan I had never seen the city lit up at night from Shooters Hill.

And 55 years later it is still as vivid.

So I thank Douglas and John for reuniting me with that memory.

And for all those who also remember the scene 55 years ago I shall just say “compare and contrast”

Location; Eltham

Picture; looking out from Shooters Hill, 2020 from the collection of Douglas White

"down an inviting green lane [that] leads to Eltham, a pleasant walk of hardly two miles" in the company of Bradshaw's guide of 1862

Now I never tire of guide books and so here we are with Bradshaw’s Illustrated Handbook to London and its Environs which was published in 1862 and includes a walk to Eltham.*

South of Woolwich from Bradshaw's Inland Navigation, 1830

Many people will be familiar with his railway timetables which he began issuing from 1839 just nine years after the first passenger railway began transporting people and goods from Liverpool to Manchester.

Few however know that he also produced three maps of The Inland Navigation of England and Wales which detailed the canal network and are still a wonderful source of information.

He was born in 1801 in Pendleton and was apprenticed to an engraver.  In 1821 he set up an engraving business in Manchester and produced a series of popular maps of Lancashire and Yorkshire.

But with the coming of the railways George Bradshaw saw an opportunity not to be missed.  The network had grown with a speed and the original 30 or so miles of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830 had become over 8,000 miles just 25 years later connecting most of our cities and towns.

Mr Bradshaw died in 1852 but the company continued and with an eye to the moment produced the Illustrated Handbook to London and its Environs to coincide with the second Great International Exhibition.

The book is divided into five parts, which are then further divided into a series of daily walking routes including detailed descriptions of what you might see along the way.

So for the curious 21st century reader here are descriptions on how to cross London by foot, train and boat as well as what the city and surrounding areas had to offer in 1862.

And I couldn’t resist following his adventure out from Blackheath to Shooter’s Hill and on “down an inviting green lane [that] leads to Eltham, a pleasant walk of hardly two miles.”

So here we are on his guided walk along the old Dover Road crossing the Heath, on Shooters Hill taking in ‘a rustic little hostelry on our left distinguished by the peculiar title of the ‘Sun-in-the-Sand’which was the haunt of quite a few 19th century writers who took advantage of an open balcony from which a pleasant view may be obtained of the surrounding country."

And from there we are directed up to Shooters Hill and told that it "commands an expansive prospect [from which] 'the mighty mass of brick smoke and shipping’ as Byron calls the view of London from this point, is well contrasted with the foliage of the wooded country extending towards the south beyond the vale of Eltham.”

Sevendroog Castle, 1909

And this is a fitting point to pause on the adventure which I will return to tomorrow and instead announce that the restored Sevendroog Castle’s opening day is scheduled to be on the Spring Bank Holiday at the end of May.

Illustrated Handbook to London and its Environs, is available on Kindle and in hard copy from Conway Publishers.  Now I should know, I downloaded my electronic copy yesterday and ordered up a hard copy today.

Now that shows interest in Mr Bradshaw











Pictures; south of Woolwich from Bradshaw’s  Inland Navigation of England and Wales, 1830, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ and Sevendroog Castle from The story of Royal Eltham,  R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm

* Bradshaw’s Illustrated Handbook to London and its Environs, 1861, republished in 2012 

**The City, the East, the West, the North, the South

King Cholera ......... stories of Public Health

I have been reflecting on those awful diseases that stalked our cities, towns and villages just over 170 years ago.

Of these Cholera was regarded by many as the worst and was often referred to as “Deadly” or “King Cholera” It is an infection caused by contaminated food and water. The main symptoms are diarrhoea and vomiting, and if untreated will continue until the patient becomes severely dehydrated. In the final stages a cholera victim will bring up what was called rice water and is almost clear liquid with fishy smell and resemble living skeletons.

Its impact was always going to be worst in the overcrowded and unsanitary parts of the city where large numbers were crowded together in back to back housing and narrow enclosed courts.

Span Court off Artillery Street is a fine example of a court and survived into the 1960s.

There are vivid descriptions of these places in the 1840s by writers like Frederick Engels, Leon Faucher and Dr Kay, as well as official reports.

The Report of the General Board of Health on the Epidemic Cholera of 1848 & 1849, drew attention to the fact that in the Market Street district of Manchester half the cases of Cholera were from the inhabitants of courts and cellar dwellings, which were in close proximity to open privies where the water supply was of a “poor quality” often served several cottages and was generally only “turned on for an hour day”

More revealing are the case notes of Dr Henry Gaulter who experienced the first outbreak of Cholera during the May to December of 1832. He kept a detailed record of the first three hundred patients he attended describing their physical condition, the onset of the disease and their living conditions but was forced to abandon the exercise as the numbers increased.

 Here are the fit, not so fit and in many cases undernourished residents of streets which were overcrowded and dirty, like Martha Chorlton aged 57 of 10 John Street Ancoats, who lived in a “locality, crowding, filth, &c. Street in a very populous and poor neighbourhood.”*

Or Thomas Cavanagh aged 5 and his mother Elizabeth who lived at 5 Wakefield-street Little Ireland which “fronted an open area but an impure stream whose channel does the function of a sewer, passes by the door to adjoining field where it collects and stagnates: house and inhabitants very filthy: three children and two adults on a straw bed.” 

And so it goes on but not all the streets were dirty and not all those who would contract the disease were poor. The rich had servants who may have had relatives in the more depressed parts of the city and might walk the disease in by the servant’s entrance.

Nor should we forget that the wealthy often lived in close proximity to run down areas. So that very posh set of late 18th century houses on St John Street off Deansgate was just  next door to Spam Court and surrounded by roads where there was overcrowding and Cholera.

Perhaps also we should be careful not to over state the impact of the disease on the city. There were just over 142,000 people in the city of which according to Gaulter 1,325 died.  But then there is the danger of falling into that callous numbers game which judges deaths in terms of statistics while for the individual just one death is a tragedy.

And the chances were that for those who contracted it death was a pretty strong out come. So for those who caught Cholera in Manchester over 50% would die while in Chorlton on Medlock the figure was 38% and in Salford 30%. These are not odds that I would fancy.

Nor I think should we feel that it was just the cities and towns that suffered. Rural areas were equally unsanitary and diseases like typhus and typhoid were according to the Poor Law Commissioners real threats in the countryside.

Which of course brings us to Chorlton, and in the next few weeks I shall be reporting on child mortality, sickness and public health in our own township but in the meantime I am happy to say that the worst is over here on Beech Road.

Picture; Span Court, south side of Artillery Street, J.Ryder, 1965 m00211, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass & New Wakefield Street, Little Ireland today from the collection of Andrew Simpson

 Sources, Gaulter Henry, The Origin and Progress of the Malignant Cholera, 1833, London, & Appendix A, To the Report of the General Board of Health on the Epidemic Cholera of 1848 & 1849, 1850, London

* Gaulter

The forgotten Chorlton Bookshop ……..

Take a former front room in a house on Barlow Moor Road and in the late 1970s into the next decade you had a bookshop.

It was only open on a Saturday and specialized in books on the Labour Movement, Socialism and Green and Feminist issues, and was located in the old Labour Party offices.

From memory I doubt that they were queuing outside on the street but there was a steady trickle of customers most Saturdays.

Sometimes there was a run on posters or the latest book by a well-known politician and there was always regular trade for Tribune and Labour Weekly.

And in my case while doing a stint on the rota I was a sucker for odd pamphlet “topical badge”.

Most of the material came from Grass Roots on a sale and return basis, not that it ever rivalled Bryan the Book on Beech Road or Chorlton Book Shop, but for a few years it was a presence.

Location; Barlow Moor Road

Pictures, the alternative bookshop, circa 1979-1980, from the collection of Andrew Simpson 

When we had a piano shop on Beech Road

Sometimes a picture captures a moment which with hindsight allows you to see that things were just about to change.

 Here is another of those photographs taken by Tom McGrath in the middle 1980s.

I don’t suppose any of us could have realized that as we walked past the old closed up off license that within a couple of years two out of these three shops would be part of the transformation of Beech Road.

For as long as I can remember Muriel and Richard had run the green grocers in the centre of the parade.  On one side had been the off license which had sold bottled beer since the early years of the 20th century, while on the other the shop had been many things, including in the 50s a grocery store and by the time I washed up here was selling pianos.

But all of that was about to change and Tom’s pictures captures that point of change.

The off license which had struggled on into the 1980s became the Italian deli while the piano shop became a cafe before becoming a series of wine bars and growing its extension.

Only Richard and Muriel’s stayed the course, but were about to have a new and very impressive sign put above the door announcing that they were the Purveyors of fine fruit and vegetables, which they were.

But back in the mid 80s such things just didn’t seem to be done in the same way.  If you wanted fruit and veg, then that is where on Beech Road you went.  Just like if you needed paraffin or the odd nail or screw you went to the ironmongers next to Wilkinson’s the butchers.  Everyone knew them and knew what they sold.

Of course within a few years the old council offices had become the Lead Station, the grocers' beside the barbers' had become Primavera and the Wool Shop was to become Truth.

All of which makes Tom’s picture such a wonderful record of the old Beech Road some of us still remember.  And as if on cue as I was standing outside one of the new shops a couple went past telling their friend about “trendy Beech Road.”

What a lot has changed.

Picture, from the collection of Tom McGrath

The shock of the new ...........travelling the railway in 1830

Now I am not sure that some of the detail is completely accurate on this painting by A.B. Clayton of the “Inaugural journey of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway 1830” but what I like is the way that it captures the shock of the new.

There rattling along at an impressive speed is the future while looking on are two oldish chaps who were no doubt born in the previous century when the canal was the cutting edge of transport technology and the horse the fastest you could travel.

One of the men leans on the sign warning the curious of the dangers presented by the innocent line of railway track.  And it was at the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway that William Huskinson the MP for Liverpool was killed when he was run over by Locomotive.

Now there are plenty of descriptions of the opening day and memories of people who travelled the trains from Liverpool to Manchester but my favorite is from J T Slugg’s wonderful book Reminiscences of Manchester published in 1881, and describing the city in the 1830s*.  Slugg lived here in Chorlton and knew Thomas Ellwood whose writings on the township are still required reading by anyone who wants to know what the village was like in the 19th century.

Likewise Slugg paints a detailed picture of “this system of travelling” which “it seemed impossible to jump from old practices and habits into a new order of things without passing a transition stage [so] as there had been two classes of passengers by coach – inside and outside- so there were at first only two classes of trains. The first class trains went at 7 and 10 a.m., and 2 and 5 p.m.; and the second class at 7-30 a.m., and 1 and 5-30 p.m."

And of course the accommodation varied with the cost of the fare.  For 7s you got to sit in a first class carriage holding four passengers and for a shilling less you shared with five others.  Second class cost 5s for “glass coaches and in open carriages, 3s.6d.”  Those who had not booked in advance were not permitted to travel.

But perhaps the most revealing insight into that age of transition was that “there were no wayside stations except at Newton, and [so] the train stayed anywhere on the line to suit the convience of passengers.”

Moreover the “directors announced that they were determined to prevent the practice of supplying liquor on the road, and requested that passengers not alight, [but] before this regulation as to liquor was issued I [Slugg] took a journey to Liverpool in the stand up boxes, and well recollect on the return stopping at Patricroft, opposite to an inn on the left-hand side and seeing a young woman, carrying a large tray of glasses containing liquors and cigars, which she supplied to many of the passengers.”

But that is enough for now.

Pictures; Inaugural journey of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway 1830, A.B.Clayton, in the public domain and the rest  from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Slugg, J.T.,Reminiscences of Manchester, 1881

On Shooters Hill in 1909

Looking down Shooters Hill in 1909

I am back on Shooters Hill in the June of 1841 thinking about the small community of 58 people who lived on this northern boundary of Eltham.

I had planned to write about them today but instead I couldn’t resist showing this picture of Shooters Hill looking west down the road.

It is taken from the book The Story of Royal Eltham which was written by R.R.C. Gregory in 1909 and although it has long been out of print it has been carefully digitalised by Roy Ayres and can be seen online at http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm

And so back to our picture which was taken just 70 or so years after yesterday’s story.

Picture; from The story of Royal Eltham, R.R.C. Gregory, 1909 and published on The story of Royal Eltham, by Roy Ayers, http://www.gregory.elthamhistory.org.uk/bookpages/i001.htm